Desktop Connect App

To those of you who have purchased the desktop connect app, would you willing to shed some light on how to use it? I have the app installed on my iPad but don't know how to set up the mac end of things.

I checked the webiste to no avail. There are several users who have complained there asking for instructions.

Click to expand...

If you go to the FAQ's there are some pretty detailed instructions. In a nutshell, you need to find out what your outside IP address is, your network IP for the computer you want to connect to, and port forward the port through your router.

From the website:

We are working on a solution that will make it easy for people who don't mind installing an application on their computers. The update will be announced as soon as its ready.

If you don't like installing applications on your computer, you can always setup port forwarding on your routers.

Access to your home network from the iPad requires a few things

1. You need to know how to get to your computer.
To get to a computer we must first know where it is. Every computer in a network has an address (called IP address). The computer at work is connected to a wireless router, and that router is generally connected to you cable modem (or DSL depending on your ISP - Comcast etc).

a. The cable modem (or DSL) has a unique address that identifies it on the internet. You can reach the modem from any computer in the world with its address. (External IP address)
b. The wireless router creates an internal network that gives out different addresses to all your computers connected to it. (Internal IP address)
c. Each service on your computer runs on a port. This is how the iMAC can figure out that it needs to send data to a particular application (Port)

So this is how it works:

Your home ---> using the EXTERNAL IP to get to the Cable Modem at work
Cable Modem --> Just sends everything to the Wireless router
Wireless router --> using the internal IP address knows how to get to your computer
computer --> using the PORT number knows how to get to the screen sharing application

1. Get the IP address of your router
Go to "http://www.whatismyip.com". This website will show your "external" address.

2. Get the IP address of your computer:

If you have a MAC OSX and do the following:
System Preferences -> Network.
You will see a message like this -> "AirPort is connected to NNNN and has the IP address XX.XX.XX.XX"
where, NNN is the name of your wireless network and XX.XX.XX.XX is the IP address of your iMAC.
Also, go to system preferences -> Sharing, and turn on "Remote Login". This start a SSH server (so all your data can be encrypted). This step is optional but strongly recommended for security of your information.

So, the router must be told the following:
Forward all packets on the port to XX.XX.XX.XX (this is the IP address we got from the MAC).

This is called port forwarding.

How you set this up really depends on the type of router that you have.
Please visit this excellent site ("http://portforward.com/") and look up information about your router.

To verify if everything was setup correctly ->
1. go to http://www.canyouseeme.org/
2. In the port, enter 22 if you setup SSH and 5900 if you setup VNC only.

Now that you have setup port forwarding and have your external IP, go to the iPad and start Desktop Connect.

1. Go to Add computer
2. Choose a computer type (in this case its VNC)
3. Tap the host name and enter the external IP address)
4. Go to Authentication and enter your VNC password
5. Turn on "Use SSH", If you turned on "Remote Login" on the MAC and have forwarded port 22 on the wireless router.
a. Enter the username and password that you will use to login to the MAC. This is same username and password you would use to login to the iMAC locally.
b.Leave Hostname and Port blank.

6. Go back and press "Save".

7. Try connecting. If everything went well, you should be seeing your screen now.

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